Hi all,
Let me start with a little background about myself. I am currently a Language Arts instructional coach at an elementary school. Before that, I was an elementary teacher for 8 years. Now, I can add graduate student to the list. Being a graduate student is what has me here blogging.
I have heard of blogs before, but I never thought I'd be creating my own one day. I am currently taking a course in which one of the assignments is to create a blog and to post about something that interests me. As an educator and as a graduate student in the educational technology program, what really interests me is, you guessed it, the use of technology in education.
It was not difficult for me to decide to get my master's degree in educational technology. Working in a school, I have noticed that every year technology plays a bigger role in education. I consider myself to have an average knowledge of education. In a few years, having just an average knowledge of education is not good enough anymore. That is why getting a master's degree is educational technology was the obvious choice for me.
Now, getting back to the question posted as the title for this post. I strongly believe that technology plays a great role in how students are learning now a days. I found a video that discusses how technology can facilitate learning between students in higher education. Many of the things discussed in the video can be applied to elementary education as well. I would like to share that video with you.
In the video, Don Olcott, the chief executive of The Observatory of Borderless Higher Education, provides his view of how the use of technology and online courses can facilitate learning between students.
One of the things that I can relate to in the video is when Olcott speaks about interaction in a face to face classroom versus online classroom interaction. He states that the same students are usually the ones to raise their hand and participate in class discussions. I agree with that statement. I have seen it in my elementary classrooms many times. It made me think, "What if I create a blog for my classroom in which students can feel free to ask questions and post their reflections about a class discussion?" I think that I would get more students to open up on a blog that in the classroom. On a blog, I can be a facilitator on the "sidelines" and let students discuss among themselves about a given topic. I believe this would be a much more powerful experience for students than just listening to me give them information all day long.
Another thing that really caught my attention from this video was when he talked about teachers needing to have knowledge about the technological tools that students are currently using. I agree with that. However, he also said that teachers don't have to be experts with the use of such technologies and that is where I disagree. In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson mentions that, "Before you attempt to bring these technologies to your students, first be selfish about their use in your own learning practice (p. 8)." I believe that in order to bring technology into my classroom, I must first become an "expert" at it.
To sum it all up, technology is coming into the classrooms whether we like it or not. As educators, we need to figure out how we can present it to students in a way that is going to help them succeed. We also need to find ways to use technology as a way to facilitate learning between students.
One such technology that is starting to be seen in classrooms is the Interactive White Boards (IWB) . In the school I teach, the IWB is yet to be implemented, but I hope that we get there soon. Below is a link to an article that demonstrates how the IWB can enhance student interaction in the classroom.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1475939X.2012.659888#.VNemd_nF-So
Please feel free to use this blog to offer any ideas on how technology can facilitate learning between students.
Sources:
Richardson, Will. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Third Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: A SAGE Company
Facilitate Learning Between Students--Olcott. YouTube. 16, Aug. 2010
Damian Maher (2012) Teaching literacy in primary schools using an interactive
whole-class technology: facilitating student-to-student whole-class dialogic interactions,
Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 21:1, 137-152
